Transformation

by James Gunn

  “But my purpose has not,” Jer said and pulled the door shut.

  * * *

  A few cycles later a Dorian showed up at the barred door. Jer recognized him—he was clearly male—the lead scientist who had rejected her explanations for what the Jak Machine could do and had consigned her to this cell. The cell door clicked as he approached. He pulled the door open, entered the cell, closed the door behind him, and rocked back solidly facing Jer, his trunk twitching slowly. He clearly was not concerned that Jer might attack him, and he was probably right. He outweighed her by several hundred pounds of muscle developed to withstand a world several gravities greater than Earth’s, much less a satellite orbiting Ganymede, or Earth’s moon, where she had spent most of her life. And his trunk looked deadly. Jer remained seated on the bench that had grown so familiar that it seemed almost an extension of her body.

  When he spoke, his voice did not display the same disdainful, skeptical dismissal that it had during the presentation of the Jak Machine. Instead his tone seemed moderated, perhaps even approaching the tone that he might have used speaking to another Dorian. “My name is Baldor. I was the chief scientist at your demonstration.”

  “I know who you are,” Jer said.

  “I hope you have had time to consider your offense,” he said.

  “I certainly have had the time if I knew what the offense was,” Jer said.

  Baldor looked at Jer impassively, like all Dorians, but his trunk was twitching. Jer thought that, given time, she might be able to judge a Dorian’s state of mind from the movement of its trunk. “You committed one of the gravest breaches of behavior against the Federation. The Federation has few regulations, because Federation citizens understand proper behavior. But the Federation cannot overlook behavior that threatens its existence.”

  “And how can a scientific experiment that does not explode or contaminate threaten Federation existence?” Jer said.

  Baldor looked at Jer as if her question was not worthy of an answer, and then he said, “The most important aspect of Federation consensus government is the secret location of Federation Central. It provides status, authority, and protection from unstable individuals or regimes. Civil servants are brought here in Federation Central ships. The only citizens allowed to know Federation Central’s coordinates are representatives of its constituent worlds to the Federation Council.”

  “And yet Asha knew them, because she was imprisoned here, and now so do Riley and Adithya,” Jer said.

  “All of whom would have been imprisoned, like you,” Baldor said, “had it not been for Tordor’s intervention. It was a serious breach of Federation protocol and one that Tordor might well have been called to answer for if he had not left Federation Central.”

  “And yet the council did nothing,” Jer said.

  “It was a sad day for the Federation—and for Dor. Tordor will have a difficult time explaining his failure of judgment.”

  “If he returns,” Jer said.

  “There is that,” Baldor said.

  “And if he returns,” Jer said, “it will be as the hero of the Federation, the champion who ventures far from the tribe, defeats the enemy, and returns with great things for his people.”

  “You speak in mythical terms.”

  “Humans have come to understand the way in which legends describe and inform our behavior. But they do not explain my imprisonment,” Jer said.

  “When you appeared in our midst,” Baldor said, “you raised the specter of the total loss of our most precious protection against attack, against insurrection, against betrayal: our location. What would happen if anyone, anywhere, could be transported to Federation Central? How could we control that? It would overturn everything about Federation life that is essential to our existence, to our very image of ourselves.”

  “Surely that is a matter of logistics,” Jer said. “As long as no Jak Machine is allowed on Federation Central itself, it carries no threat of violating your seclusion. But your concern concedes the capabilities of the Jak Machine to transport people—and information.”

  “I concede that.”

  “And you have no doubt done your own tests.”

  “We have,” Baldor said.

  “Including transportation of living creatures,” Jer said.

  “Of course. First animals. And then people.”

  “And the results were as I demonstrated.”

  “Even more.”

  “In what way?”

  Baldor’s trunk twitched even more dramatically. “We instructed the Xiforan to transport itself. It was hesitant, but as the junior scientist it had no choice. After two initial failures to manipulate the controls, the Xiforan succeeded in bringing itself to push the buttons initiating the process and appeared in our Federation Central laboratory, blinking and dazed but alive. But different.”

  “How?”

  “The Xiforan who appeared in our midst was not the wily, paranoid creature we all knew. Instead he had become as stable, as trustworthy, and, though I do not say this happily, as intelligent as any Dorian.”

  Jer looked at Baldor as expressionlessly as the Dorian. “And this concerns you in what way?”

  “Clearly your Machine has capabilities that you did not disclose, capabilities that threaten the Federation even more than the loss of its secret location,” Baldor said.

  “To have Xifora as capable as Dorians?” Jer asked.

  “That is unsettling,” Baldor said, “and to have unsuspecting future users of this device emerging changed from the transportation experience would be even more unsettling. No governing body, even one as benign as the Federation, could survive a citizenry constantly changing in basic nature and capabilities.”

  “It might take a different kind of Federation,” Jer said, “but it would be a better one, better equipped to cope with unpredictable events such as the emergence of humans into the galaxy or the rumors of a Transcendental Machine, or, more pressing now, an alien invasion.”

  “That would mean a sacrifice of Federation stability and ten thousand long-cycles of peace—marred only by the Federation/human war—for an uncertain future.”

  “The future is always going to be uncertain,” Jer said. “But this is not all about the experience of your junior scientist, is it?”

  The Dorian was silent for a long moment. “Of course not,” he said at last. “As a scientist I had to try the experiment myself, and my transformation was as unsettling as that of the Xifor.”

  “You did not welcome the transformation?”

  “Dorians see themselves as the end product of self-inflicted change,” Baldor said. “They do not entertain the possibility of improvement.”

  “And yet there is room for improvement.”

  “All the customary ways in which Federation citizens adjust to each other will change,” Baldor said.

  “What you mean is that you will have to relinquish the subtle distinctions you make between species,” Jer said, “with the Dorians at the top of the leadership scale and the Xifora at the bottom. Or perhaps humans have replaced the Xifora.”

  “All social connections are woven into the tapestry of civilization.”

  “Change will come only gradually,” Jer said, “as people use the Machine and emerge changed, perfected. It will happen to individuals, not species, until finally, perhaps, a critical mass is achieved and everything will be transformed.”

  “How many will use the Machine when they learn that it destroys them at one end while it re-creates what is, essentially, a different person at the other?” Baldor said. “A scientist like myself might volunteer out of scientific curiosity, but the average bureaucrat?”

  “Don’t tell them,” Jer said.

  “Would that be fair?”

  “Is life fair? Is evolution fair? There is a force toward improvement that shapes us all, that increases our ability to survive in a universe that seems bent on our destruction. One of the expressions of that is the tools we invent to extend our capabilities,
like the Pedias that have been created to free us from the everyday necessities that keep us from imagining what understandings and accomplishments we are capable of. This is just the next step in evolution. Technology has shaped us all while we weren’t paying attention, and we are now being shaped by the cultural forces we have unleashed rather than by arbitrary changes in the natural environment.”

  “Fine words,” Baldor said. “Difficult application.”

  “And yet essential to the survival of sapience in the galaxy.”

  “There is one matter I have not addressed.”

  “What?”

  “Your father.”

  “Jak? The creator of the Jak Machine?”

  “He is a most difficult human.”

  “He is indeed,” Jer said. “But he is not my father; he is the person from whom I was cloned.”

  “That explains a great deal,” Baldor said.

  “But how did you meet him?”

  “Your machine worked at planetary distances,” Baldor said, “but I had to investigate its range. Could it work at interstellar distances? The inventor of the device had to have one, and I finally discovered the means to connect with it. Your father—your clone father—was not pleased to see me.”

  “But he did not throw you into a cell,” Jer said.

  “He wanted to,” Baldor said, “but he resisted the impulse.”

  “You see? He has changed. A few long-cycles ago he would not have resisted.”

  “We worked out an agreement.”

  “And all this conversation has been a mere ratification?” Jer said.

  “You are part of it. Including your freedom.”

  “I could have walked out of here at any time,” Jer said. She made a low growling sound deep in her throat, and the lock clicked in the door. The door came ajar. “But my business here was not finished. Now perhaps it is.”

  “I do not like the avenue we are taking,” Baldor said. His trunk twitched spasmodically before he got it under control. “It goes against all the instincts of Dorians, all the traditions of the Federation, all the culture of civilized beings.”

  “The universe has great challenges yet to throw at intelligent beings,” Jer said. “The societies that we have developed, the technologies we have created, the explosion of stars, the appetites of black holes, the dying of galaxies, the death of matter itself. This alien invasion is only the latest. We can hope that Riley and Asha and Tordor, yes, and Adithya, too, will be able to stop it, or, at least, to return with information about what it is and what must be done.”

  “And what if they fail? What if they don’t return?”

  “Then we—you and I and all the other people who go through the Jak Machine and come out the other end better than they went in—will have to be the ones that save the galaxy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Asha and Adithya decided to land at night, when the approach of their ship would be less likely to be observed and even the descent of winged aliens into their city might go unnoticed. If the Aerieans were like most birds, they would roost at night. The Pedia noted, however, that some birds foraged at night, and flying rodents flew mostly at night.

  “Let us hope,” Asha said, “that they are not like the owls or bats of human legend.”

  The Aerie city that looked fragile in the viewscreen looked no more substantial from a few kilometers away as Asha and Adithya swooped above its crystal towers and nest-like amphitheaters looking like they had been spun from glass. They would look even more spectacular in daylight, Asha thought, when the sun’s rays, feeble as they were, would turn the structures into frozen flame.

  The amphitheaters seemed to be covered by discarded garments. Asha thought they must be sleeping Aerieans, enfolded in their wings, and she motioned Adithya toward an open space between spires that seemed deserted. As they got closer, it looked like a plaza or gathering place, perhaps where the Aerieans strolled before they took flight, ate whatever their diet involved in cafés that bordered the open space, and perhaps listened to ethereal sounds appropriate to a people who soared the skies.

  They had not practiced landings, and managing their wings in a way that allowed them to come down gently on their feet led only to a tumbling arrival.

  Asha stood up. “That was rough,” she said.

  “I could have done a better job,” the medallion on her chest said.

  Adithya rubbed his elbow. “It’s a good thing we had the red sphere’s garment to protect us, or our expedition might have been over before it started.”

  Asha shrugged her shoulders, and the wings were absorbed into the garment. She stuck her nose through the portion that covered her head and took a cautious breath. “You are right,” she said to the Pedia. “The air seems breathable, though a bit chill. It has an odd odor, like all alien worlds, but this one smells like—I don’t know—animal refuse.” She stripped the garment from her head and body and stowed the material, now reduced to not much more than a flimsy handful, into a pocket of her coveralls. She might not look like an Aeriean, but with a red garment and ruby wings she would stand out even more.

  When she turned, Adithya had done the same. “What now?” he asked.

  “We check out the neighborhood. Before the citizens wake up.”

  The open space, the plaza, was paved with a smooth, transparent substance that looked and felt like glass. The plaza was dark, lighted only by Aerie’s modestly sized moon, but Asha could see that smaller structures surrounded and defined the area. Like the pavement, their fronts were transparent though colored, each one a different shade as if to identify their purpose or to set them apart from their neighbors.

  Asha and Adithya walked across the plaza, its surface slick under their feet. They felt bouncy as if the surface was resilient, and Asha thought for a moment that it might be the response of a floating city but realized that it was the psychological response to a gravity less than she expected. Closer to the buildings, Asha noticed scattered trash, some of it looking like feathers, some the detritus of a city without good street cleaning. She pointed it out to Adithya. The plaza was not as fairylike as it seemed. She picked up and examined one of the feathers. It was short, perhaps a tail feather, and it resembled the feathers she had seen in museums on Earth. Perhaps feathers were evolution’s answer to the question of flight.

  The first structure they reached had a glassy front with a yellow tinge. Asha could not see an entrance, though the unbroken front was scratched in places, as if some impatient customer had tried to enter when the place was closed. Asha could see only a meter or two into the dark interior. She saw benches and perhaps a counter or a line of tables. Maybe it was a restaurant.

  Next to it was a slightly wider storefront with its transparent surface stained purple. The surface, however, was not intact. A darker space in the front indicated an entrance that had not been closed or was broken. The shape was not rectangular but rounded and larger above than below, as if to provide entrance to something broader toward the top. Asha stepped inside and let her vision adjust. To her left were shelves that seemed to support glassy jars and bottles. To her right, what looked like brushes and combs hung on the wall as if glued there by some mutual attraction. Between were a series of low, rectangular tables. This was a place where Aerieans got groomed or treated for whatever aches or ailments afflicted flyers, she thought.

  Asha stepped back and wondered why the entrance had not been repaired. Maybe it was a public service always open and free to whoever needed it.

  The next front had a blue tinge, and it, too, was unbroken. Through its tinted transparency Asha could see what seemed like garments hanging, without means of support, from glassy walls. Perhaps flying creatures needed protection from the cold of the upper atmosphere or simply liked to dress up.

  Asha realized that she was seeing farther into the interior of this front than the others, and as she turned back toward the plaza, Adithya tapped her on the shoulder and indicated the far wall. The first light of a rising
sun had turned the structures into mirrors reflecting their radiance across the space between.

  Now Asha could see the entire plaza area, entirely enclosed by low buildings without avenues for entering or leaving. Appropriate for a population that flew, she thought, but not for visitors like her and Adithya. They would have trouble leaving.

  “Let’s conceal ourselves and see what happens,” she said.

  “Where?” Adithya looked around the plaza. In a city built of glass there was no place to hide.

  “Here,” Asha said. She motioned to the storefront they had just passed, and led the way through the entrance into the structure and hoped nobody would need grooming or massage first thing in the morning.

  Confronting the Aerieans could not be avoided, but perhaps they could learn a little more before that critical first encounter occurred.

  * * *

  The first Aerieans arrived shortly after daybreak. Asha imagined them rousing in their spun-glass nests, spreading their wings in the warming sun, shouting into the morning sky with the joy of living, bursting into the air. They came, slanting down from the sky, one at first, then two and three, swooping, tumbling, coming to a standing stop in the middle of the plaza with a majestic forward spread of wings. And then the slow gathering of the wings around the body like a living cloak and a slow turning to inspect surroundings.

  The scene seemed like a performance from some celestial ballet, almost mind-shattering in its beauty and grace. Asha took a deep breath and wondered what it would be like to own the sky, to wheel and cavort without concern for gravity or normal constraints of movement, so unlike the clumsy soaring that she and Adithya had done on red sphere wings that seemed now like an ugly parody.

  She watched, hidden in the darkness of the grooming facility, as they approached singly and in small groups, and was surprised to see them not as splendid as they seemed in the air. Their feathers seemed dusty and with patches on them that might be mold. She could not see their bodies, folded as they were within their wings, but their faces were not angelic; they were ugly, with prominent eye ridges, sharp, beak-like noses, and slits for mouths that occasionally parted to reveal carnivore-like teeth.